Author: Nanadadzie Ghansah

I am suffering from severe case of Olympiosis.
Symptoms are quite prevalent in the mornings but are felt all day long – tiredness, yawning, red eyes, arthralgias, headache, deafness to alarm clocks and gross irritability. It can be confused with a hangover. The difference is found by measuring the blood alcohol level in most patients.
Cause is thought to be inability to extract the human mass away from a television set during the Olympic games. It was first described in the 1970s.
Most experts attribute the pathology to pure wonder at athletic prowess. Game and his team in a seminal paper postulate that the sheer determination exhibited by the athletes induces heightened admiration leading to insomnia. Track et al measured the level of light emitted from the medals the athletes receive and noticed a high correlation between the amount of gold won and the severity of Olympiosis and laryngitis.
Cases of Olympiosis spike during the Swim, Track and Beach Volleyball events. Men seem to be particularly afflicted during the Beach Volley Ball events. This year, the CDC is reporting that doctors are seeing a spike around the Ladies Gymnastics events too.
Four years ago, researchers in London isolated two viruses called the Phelps and the Bolt that might play roles in the severity of Olympiosis. This year, scientists in Rio de Janeiro have isolated two more viruses – the Ledecky and the Biles. A group outside Rio reported on a variant called the Manuel. A team at the NIH is working on vaccines.
Olympiosis might be contagious, a fact that the experts cannot seem to agree on.
Treatment is avoiding television sets. A good televisionicide will do the trick. Also, one should avoid contact with the internet in all it’s forms. Symptoms usual subside after about 3 -5 days of avoidance.
Failure to treat leads to a chronic state that is incurable. The long term prognosis is dire. It seems to lead to sundaynightfootballiosis, modaynightfootballiosis or even EPLiosis. Most chronic patients end up in rehabilitation centers, where they spend the rest of their lives watching TV and drinking beer or knitting.
A select group of patients seem not to progress to the chronic stage and I think I belong to that group so for now, Olympiosis, bring it on!

“Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes”.
– an Old saying of controversial origin.

Somewhere in Middle America….

What the heck is going on here?
I can hardly recognize this place anymore! Everywhere I go, I hear and see strange people! Where did they come from? Walk down Main Street. Half the stores have names I cannot even pronounce.
Thirty years ago, we were 85% of the population. Now we are only 60%! Let that sink in – 60%. At this rate, we will be an endangered species in 50 years!
They are coming from everywhere, taking our jobs here and shipping the rest out. Look at our towns – deserted landscapes of boarded-up homes and factories!
Together with those bleeding hearts, they even made one of them President and he wasn’t even born here. Consider that! Even worse, I hear he worships differently! And he is President!
He wants to take our money and our guns. He wants to weaken us so he can rule forever.
Now they march around openly claiming they matter more than we do. The nerve! The absolute nerve!
Even scarier are those who want to kill us off, change how we worship and replace our laws. I say, stop them all from coming in. We need some law and order now!
We built this country with our sweat and blood. We fought for it. Our ideas made it what it is. It is ours. We want it back! We need to take it back! We used to be the greatest. Now, we are but a shadow of who we are. I say, we need that greatness back now!
I sit and listen to all theses clowns wanting to be president and wonder if any of them sees things the ways I do and has the guts to say what needs to be said!
I wonder, I really do…

I’ve long been guided by this saying by George Bernard Shaw:
“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
I guess the Obamas believe in the same thong and that’s why the FLOTUS said:
“…How we explain that when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high.”

I’ve always sought to reconcile how this country was founded and the ideals she was founded on. Monday night, Sen Cory Booker of NJ said these words that got me thinking:
“But our founding documents weren’t genius because they were perfect. They were saddled with the imperfections and even the bigotry of the past…
But those facts and ugly parts of our history don’t distract from our nation’s greatness. In fact, I believe we are an even greater nation, not because we started perfect, but because every generation has successfully labored to make us a more perfect union.”
The US is a great nation not only for what she has been, what she is now but the potential she still holds. Change and progress have come in fits and starts but come they have. I look at how divided the nation is now and wonder if it is a fit or a start. I hear the vitriol and rancor and wonder if we can really get it right this time!
History is an interesting thing. If it is not revised, it is a great tool….
After Michelle Obama’s speech on Monday, there was a claim by Bill O’Reilly of Fox that the slaves who worked on the White House were “well-fed”.
Well, there is actually a first hand account that disputes this claim and is from no other than Abigail Adams, the wife of the John Adams, the 2nd President of the US. She moved into the WH while it was still under construction. David Graham has a piece in the Atlantic about this so I pulled up the reference, which is a letter Abigail Adams wrote. It can be found in the National Archives.

“In the letter to her uncle, a Dr Cotton Tufts, she writes:
From Abigail Smith Adams to Cotton Tufts,
28 November 1800
Columbia City of Washington Novbr 28 1800
Dear Sir
…. The effects of Slavery are visible every where; and I have amused myself from day to day in looking at the labour of 12 negroes from my window, who are employd with four small Horse Carts to remove some dirt in front of the house. the four carts are all loaded at the same time, and whilst four carry this rubish about half a mile, the remaining eight rest upon their Shovels, Two of our hardy N England men would do as much work in a day as the whole 12, but it is true Republicanism that drive the Slaves half fed, and destitute of clothing…whilst the owner waches about Idle, tho his one Slave is all the property he can boast, Such is the case of many of the inhabitants of this place…”

I guess they were not that well-fed after all!

In all, I thought the black man who had more reason to be cynical and dark rather exuded more brightness and hope than the billionaire who exuded darkness and cynicism a week ago in Cleveland. Question is, who will the people listen to?